“For some time now we had been thinking of taking a long trip far from our habits and our work environment, during a summer holiday period, with the idea of being able to use our knowledge and be able to get to know in depth a completely different and unique reality. And it didn’t take us long to understand that, by telling this desire to the AGAPE team, all this could become reality: August 2024, in Maputo in Mozambique.

We imagined our trip with Flavia and, after several long and thought provoking video calls, we came to the conclusion that our small contribution could be dedicated to the creation of a training course for young boys and girls who live or attend the Mafalala Neighborhood- in Maputo – in collaboration with the Machaka Association.

The preparation for the course was long and thoughtful. We worked on the program, the dates and the topics of the course, thinking about what could be useful to kids of our age, in this era in which social media and digital tools are increasingly present in all of our lives. The division of the topics was simple: “How to build a CV following your inclinations and needs” and “Use of social media” are topics that Chiara can deal with, since she has worked in the communications field for several years.

“Introduction to the Office Package: Power Point, Word and Excel” is clearly a topic for Andrea, an automatic engineer and university professor.

Here we are, ready to leave, on August 9, full of curiosity for the people we would meet, at the idea of their reaction to the topics of the course and to life in Mozambique, a country that until that moment was unknown to us. During the whole month of real and full life, lived among the different neighborhoods of the city, immersed in all the activities that AGAPE carries out in Machaka and in many other places of the city, we felt at home. After the first days of getting to know and impacting the city, we finally started our training course, which consisted of four theoretical lessons and two practical lessons, useful to put to good use what we had heard during our interventions in a strange “Italian-Portuguese-English”. Indeed, what we thought could be an insurmountable obstacle (the language) turned out to be that extra touch of wonder.

The magic came when we decided, in agreement with the students participating in the course, that we could explain our lessons in English because immediately afterwards, some of them who knew English could translate for all their classmates in Portuguese, creating this sense of union and mutual support, which made each lesson a real exchange of ideas and knowledge.

With the practical lessons we instead got to the heart of the concepts and it was the moment in which we realized that all the participants were really enthusiastic and were very interested in learning more about these topics: some of them now have a new CV and others were able to delve into the office tools, so useful for working and daily life. All this thanks to the support of the Machaka team, which provided us with projectors and computers to share among the students.

After tests and practical exercises, September 3rd was the big day: the day of the exam and the delivery of the certificates. We will never forget those smiles at the delivery of the certificates and the emotion we felt when we saw the big congratulatory cake that Machaka had planned to celebrate all together.

We really hope we were able to convey useful knowledge to those who participated… we certainly learned much more than we could have imagined.

Kanimambo! Thank you!”